- Hi.
Okay, there's no fluff today.
I'm going to get straight into it,
because I know why you're here.
You're here to learn my
four simple exam hacks
to improve your grade by up to 11%
and I want to get straight into it.
I don't want to mess about because
I'm here to teach you what works.
These exam hacks, it's a trendy word,
but these exam hacks,
I feel like I'm on Tik Tok
or something, but they work.
They've worked with hundreds of students
who've been in my course and they work.
No matter what your ability,
no matter what stage you are
in IB Physics, they work.
So without further ado,
we'll get on to them.
We'll give you a little teaser,
the four exam hacks start with number one.
And it's, Get that EASY
additional 1 - 2% in paper 1,
exam hack number two,
it's just memorize stuff
for an extra 9 - 11%,
exam hack number three is,
one simple exam command for an extra 6%
and exam hack number four is,
know what's impossible
for an extra 1 - 2%.
So each of these exam hacks
can increase your grade
by the percentage shown on these slides.
And it's quite mind
blowing when you look at it
from a strategic point of view.
Now, as you go through these exam hacks,
you will be motivated, you'll be excited
about what the possibility is.
You may also want the
opportunity to work with me
more after these exam hacks.
Because this is just a
tiny, tiny introduction
into what's possible inside GradePod
and Ace Your IB Physics Exams.
But if all you get from today's video
are these four exam hacks, then I'm happy.
I've given you advice to go
away and push those grades up.
Okay.
So exam hack number one is,
get that easy additional
1 - 2% in paper 1.
How easy is it?
Well, we have an analysis of
a standard level paper 1 here.
And that analysis is from
a examiner subject report.
You can see there are a number of columns
and the two farther most columns,
the column headings are
blank and difficulty index.
Under blank, it shows you how many
people left that question blank,
and under difficulty index,
it gives an idea of how
difficult the question is.
I think the most difficult
question here is 74.
So it goes from 0 to 74.
You can see that as you
go through the paper,
the number of questions are
left blank tends to increase.
But, have a look at the difficulty index.
The difficulty index doesn't increase.
The difficulty index is evenly
spread throughout the paper.
So what that tells me about
standard level paper 1 exams
is that students run out of time.
And if they run out of time,
they're missing out on easier questions
at the end of the paper.
So my advice for you is, if
you're running out of time,
head to the back of the paper
and never, never leave a
multiple choice question blank.
I'm telling you, that that
could increase your final grade
in IB Physics, including internal
assessment and everything
by 1 - 2%.
Now I know what you're thinking,
how did I come up with that figure?
Well, there are 30 marks
in the standard level paper
and paper 1 accounts for 20
to 30% of your final grade.
So you're really looking
around about 0.7 to 1%
per question.
Now, if you're tempted to
leave four questions empty,
you're missing out on a
potential 4% on your final grade.
I'm not suggesting you'll
get all of those four correct
if you just guess,
but your likely to get one
of them correct out of four,
or two of them correct out of four.
That's just statistics.
There's only four answers.
You've got a 25% chance
of getting them right.
So if you're the kind of
student who might leave
four unanswered questions in
paper 1, you're missing out.
You're missing out on a possible 1 - 2%
of your final grade by doing so.
And it's the same
situation for higher level.
Higher level, you can see as well,
the last few questions of the paper,
were the most commonly not answered,
suggesting that higher level students
are running out of time as well,
but you can see the difficulty index
is spread evenly throughout.
It's the same issue.
So higher level students are
missing out on those marks too.
That's my exam hack number one.
Now here's the result it can have.
Now, there's a rather cheesy
picture of me at the bottom,
with a speech bubble,
with my bit of advice.
And it's never leave a
multiple choice question blank.
Now, Fanny was a member of my course.
She joined in February
and her exams were in May.
So she joined with only
a few months to go.
And she says, "In February,
I honestly didn't think I
would even pass IB Physics.
I was only enrolled in
Ace Your IB Physics Exams
for three months and I
got a six in physics HL.
Only one point away from a seven.
I'm super happy with this
and I'm proud of the progress I made.
It really helped to have
your course as extra support
outside of school
and I wish I'd known
about the course earlier."
Now the whole point I'm
trying to make about this
is she was one point off a seven.
Now Fanny was still
delighted with her six,
but she was one point off a seven.
And I'm just wondering,
did she leave any blank?
I'm not sure.
Okay. My next exam hack, number two.
Just memorize stuff for 9 - 11%.
Well, what's the stuff?
Let's talk about that stuff.
I've gone through the last
14 years of past papers,
and I've done a deep dive,
a deep analysis of what those
past papers are asking for.
I've done a deep analysis of the strategy
to really acing those past papers.
And what I found is that 9
- 11% of your final IB mark,
is just down to memorizing stuff.
And by stuff, I mean, one definitions,
two, approximate values
and three descriptions.
So let's talk today about how we tackle
those three areas of stuff
to make sure that your
grades increase by 9 - 11%.
So the first one is definitions
and the very clear feedback
we're getting from examiners
is that definitions must be memorized
in the most precise and correct manner.
There is no point in memorizing
a fluffy definition
for Newton's third law.
There's no point because
you'll get no marks.
So if you compile a list of definitions
and then devote time and energy
to memorizing those definitions,
you are statistically more
likely to get lots more marks.
How do you learn those definitions?
Well, I have two suggestions
for you down here.
I have a YouTube playlist and it's called,
Drunk on Definitions
and it's seen great success in the past
in helping students learn
definitions towards the exams.
I also have another solution
and that's Ace Your IB Physics Exams.
That's my course inside GradePod.
It has compiled a glossary for you
for those inside Ace
Your IB Physics Exams,
of the exact definitions you
should learn for each topic.
And I teach you how to learn
those definitions very quickly
and painlessly as well.
The second thing you should
memorize are approximate values.
So I'm talking about ballpark figures.
The speed of light is
around about three times ten
to the eight meters per second.
Or the refractive index is
around about 1.3 off glass.
These ballpark figures will
make a massive difference to you
as you progress through your papers,
because you quite often
are asked to estimate.
Or you might do a
calculation and it's unsure
whether the answer's correct or not.
These ballpark figures will
make a massive difference.
because what they'll do is
they'll allow you to conduct
a reasonableness check and that
is where you're going to wait
for exam hack number four,
where I explained that
in more detail.
The third thing you should
memorize are descriptions.
So descriptions are not
explanations because they're harder.
And there are techniques to
answer explanation questions,
but descriptions are just stuff
that needs to be memorized.
So an example might be, describe
how a transformer works.
That would be a three or four
mark question in an exam,
and you could very easily
narrow down that description
into three easily memorable bullet points.
And that's what I recommend you do.
And once you've done that,
I highly, highly, highly recommend
you put them into your revision note
and you can get your
revision note template
from the GradePod website.
So three things to memorize
to increase your grades by 9 - 11%.
You're wondering how
I got to that 9 - 11%.
Well, again, it was a deep
dive of the past papers
that proved to me that
it's as simple as that.
Now, my bit of advice from
my cheesy speech mark is,
students who compile a glossary
and spend time and energy learning them
will inevitably do much better.
And that has been
highlighted by the examiners
in past subject reports as well.
Now, here is an email from Anders.
He says, "Hi, Sally.
I just wanted to thank you so much.
It definitely helped me raise my grade.
For my mock exams, I got a four
and for the real exams, I got a seven.
I am sure that getting Drunk
on Definitions with you,
give me some extra points.
So I just wanted to express my thanks.
I'll be sure to recommend
your course onwards
to future IB graduates."
Well, that's great news for Anders.
Okay, number three.
Exam hack number three,
one simple exam command
for 6% more on your IB Physics grade.
That one simple exam
command is, calculate.
The word calculate is
very heavily examined
in paper 2 of your final exams.
In fact, it is very heavily examined
in all papers and your IB Physics exams.
But it has a very specific meaning
that I don't think students
quite understand yet.
That very specific meaning
is, obtain a numerical answer,
showing the relevant stages of working.
What that means is you
must show you're working
to get the marks.
And if you don't believe me,
can you believe the examiners?
Here's an actual examiner comment.
It says, "The presentations
of many calculations
consisted of a jumble of arithmetic,
with numbers usually
appearing out of nowhere.
Candidates need to be well aware
that their answers should
read logically well."
So examiners are not only
saying, "Show you're working",
they're also saying, "It
needs to be logical."
And that's a skill that you need to learn.
Now, inside Ace Your IB Physics Exams,
we have a step-by-step
system on how to improve
the calculate questions. It's very simple.
You follow the step by step system
and you improve your ability
to answer those questions.
You don't only see
calculate words in the exam,
you see lots of other exam
command inside the exam.
And on this webpage, I'm going
to give you a free download
that lists all the exam
command words you might see
and what they exactly mean as
specified by the examiners.
Once you have that, you can
develop your own systems
or your own strategies for
dealing with those questions.
If your inside Ace your
IB Physics in GradePod,
I give you that strategy.
I teach you my strategy for
knowing exactly what to do
when you see an IB Physics
past paper question.
And in particular, we deal
with the really tricky things
like explain questions, derive questions,
draw and defined questions.
You may not think they're tricky,
but once you see the
examiners description of them,
they can be quite tricky.
So moving on, once you
have a step-by-step system
for tackling each exam command word,
past paper questions
become completely simple.
And that's true.
Here's Charlene.
Charlene emailed me saying,
'Good morning, Sally. I really
don't know how to thank you.
I'm not even sure if words can express
my gratitude right now.
I feel like the puzzle that
is IB Physics exam papers
has just become easier.
I can proudly say, it's all thanks to you
that I'm going to start scoring full marks
questions on the explain questions.
Something that I've
been neglecting a lot."
So it does work.
If you understand what
the command word means
and what the examiner is looking for,
it does make a huge difference
to your final grade.
Quite simply.
Exam hack number four,
know what's impossible
for an extra 1 - 2%.
Impossible?
That's not a word we use in GradePod.
Well, actually some things are impossible.
No object can go faster
than the speed of light.
That's impossible.
And there are values in IB Physics
that you should just know.
Because if you complete a
calculation in paper 1, 2 or 3,
you need to know if that
answer is reasonable or not,
or is it possible.
So the refractive index of a substance,
the number N, which
represents refractive index
should always sit
between the range of one,
which is for a vacuum
and around about 2.5,
which is for a diamond.
If you're getting values
of 20 or a hundred
for refractive index,
your answer is wrong.
The energy of a photon, quite often,
you're asked to look at energy of a photon
to do with the photoelectric effect
or various other parts of the syllabus.
You're looking at around
about 10 to the minus
19 jewels for the energy of a photon.
If you're getting anything
outside of that bracket
your answers is incorrect.
A common one that you're
just supposed to know
is the diameter of a hydrogen nucleus.
So a hydrogen nucleus, you know,
a proton and a neutron together,
we're looking around about
10 to the minus 15 meters for that.
Very, very small.
If we look at the size or
the diameter of an atom,
a hydrogen atom, for
example, or any item, really,
we've got to take into
account the electron orbit,
and that makes the size
of that atom bigger.
So when you're looking at
the diameter of an atom,
your answer should be around
10 to the minus 10 meters.
On the other scale, on the
macroscopic scale of IB Physics,
the universe. How old is the universe?
10 to the 18 seconds, that's
roughly how old it is.
If you're getting answers way
above that or way below that
your answer is incorrect.
And finally, one of the things that
you should know is the
mass of the universe.
Just hold these figures in your head.
The massive universe is around
about 10 to the 50 kilograms.
And once you know these answers,
every time you complete a calculation,
you conduct a reasonableness
check in your head.
You look at the answer and
you see, is it reasonable?
It's as simple as that.
Because if your answer is not reasonable,
you've either used the wrong formula,
you've got a power of 10 error,
or you've just taped the wrong
stuff into your calculator.
So it's really quick and easy to go back
and just check those things
to make sure that you've got them right.
Now, I've said by conducting
a reasonableness check,
you can improve your grade by 1 - 2%.
And that's true.
You can improve your grade by 1 - 2%
because I'm suggesting
that maybe one or two marks
of your paper 2, one mark in your paper 1,
could be down to a power of 10 error,
it could be done to not
conducting a reasonableness check
and together they add up
to around about 1 - 2%
of your final mark.
So my advice, always conduct
a reasonableness check
on any calculated answer in your paper.
And I just want to end
up with a success story.
Sue Gond, her name is.
"Hello, Sally.
Thank you so much for reaching out.
Yes, I did get my results yesterday
and I got a seven for my IB Physics grade.
Thanks to all your
amazing help and support.
I got total score of 42
and if you would lead me
to break down the grades
like on every subject, please let me know.
My general plans for
the future are to study
biomedical engineering at the
university of British Columbia
and to hopefully become a
bio materials developer.
Thanks to you, I've built a
strong foundation in physics,
and I'm quite excited to
continue studying it in future.
I hope that helps. Thank you so much again
for all your help and support.
I really do appreciate it a lot.
Have a great day and take care."
And that's from Sue Gond.
I just wanted to let you know that
there's impossible stuff in physics,
but a seven is possible.
A seven is possible. I promise you.
And it's not something that I would say
without really genuinely believing it.
I've spent many years, since 2018
tutoring students like yourself online
through my course, Ace
your IB Physics exam,
to start thinking strategically,
to start developing that main state
that IB Physics is not overwhelming.
IB Physics is not hard.
You might feel that in a classroom setting
where you see your teacher
three or four times a week,
and you've got all your
other topics on top of you
and you don't really know how to study.
And every time you look at a
question, it feels undoable.
But if you sit down, work
hour by hour, step-by-step
and you do it with me online,
IB Physics is not hard.
I promise.
And people who have been
through this course with me,
they believe it too.
They didn't even think they
were going to pass IB Physics
and suddenly they're getting sevens.
So I'm telling you some stuff
is impossible in physics.
I'm telling you that
you can't travel faster
than the speed of light, but
getting a seven in IB Physics,
that's possible.
That's possible for any student,
at any ability, so it's possible for you.
So I hope today helped.
Have a great day.
Bye.
